March 8, 2024

The following statement was issued by the Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees on March 8 on Resistance News Network.   

This year, on International Women’s Day, the Global Solidarity Day with the Women of Gaza, we bow in reverence and honor to the proud women of Gaza, to the souls of more than 15,000 martyred women, the thousands still under the rubble, the tens of thousands of wounded, and hundreds of women detainees with unknown fates.

We bow in appreciation and respect to the mothers, wives, grandmothers, young women and girls, to the journalists and nurses, to the brave and heroic women of Gaza who have exhibited the most magnificent and greatest forms of steadfastness, pride, and the ability to face the harshest and most difficult living and humanitarian conditions, armed with the will to cling to the right to life and the right to remain on the beloved land of Gaza, in the face of the horrific genocidal war witnessed by human history at the hands of the occupation government and the army of the new Nazism, supported and participated by Western colonial states, led by the U.S. administration, which stands behind the tragedies of the peoples of the world.

This year’s International Women’s Day comes as the free peoples of the world raise their voices in streets and squares across the globe, saying “Stop the genocide in Gaza and freedom for Palestine,” as the spread and dissemination of the horrific images of massacres carried out by the Nazi occupation army on social media platforms increase – pictures of children, women, destruction and forced displacement, images of the destruction of health institutions, water tanks, bakeries, shelter centers, schools, universities, residential complexes, and all essentials of life – and demanding the prosecution of “israel” for them as war crimes.

This year, International Women’s Day arrives, and the world is more aware that the Palestinian people’s cause is a cause of national liberation from a colonial, settler, and racist occupation, the longest occupation known to history, and that the history of the struggle with the colonial Zionist project is over 75 years old, and the Palestinian people have the right to resist its occupation; a right guaranteed by international conventions, and the occupier has no right to self-defense, as promoted by the U.S. administration and Western colonial governments, to justify their brutal aggression and their participation in the genocidal war against our people in the Gaza Strip.

We, in the Federation of Women’s Action Committees – while we pride ourselves on the great participation of women around the world and Arab women in continuous mass rallies and movements demanding an immediate ceasefire, the boycott of “israel” and holding it accountable for the war crimes it commits – call on them to continue and intensify their activism to pressure their parliaments and governments, especially the Arab governments, which have yet un-utilized leverage to pressure it in its interests, to prevent the genocide in Rafah, and to allow the entry of food and medical aid to protect lives and prevent death from hunger and due to the lack of medical services.

We, in the Union of Palestinian Women’s Action Committees, and from our position in the women’s movement, the General Union of Palestinian Women, and stemming from the historical national role of the Palestinian women’s movement, call on Palestinian women – at home and in the diaspora, unions, frameworks, associations, women’s centers, and independents – to maximize their participation in national movements condemning the aggression and in campaigns to boycott “israel” and its partners in aggression, and supporting our great people and its heroic resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, and Al-Quds, as we call on them to unify their efforts and raise their voices in demanding the end of division and the restoration of national unity, under the banner of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of our people, and to build on the Moscow agreements and to prevent various dangerous scenarios that target our right to struggle and resist the occupation, separate Gaza from the West Bank, and strike the unified Palestinian representation, to pass the Zionist project’s liquidation for our Palestinian cause and our national rights.

Long live the struggle and steadfastness of the brave women of Palestine!

Glory and eternity to our martyred women and martyrs of our people!

Freedom for the female and male prisoners of freedom!

Healing for the wounded!

Glory to the resistance!

This statement has been lightly edited.